According to this NPR interview by KPLU's Dave Meyer, with Strategic News Service publisher Mark Anderson , people perform intellectual type work in three stages -
1. Research
2. Analysis
3. Documentation
Mark Anderson says that Google has the front end with it's search capability and now can move into analysis (using online collaboration tools) and finally into documentation via it's document, spreadsheet and web page creation suite called Google Apps.
Microsoft's dilemma is that they are at the end of this process, since they have been unable to come up with a viable search tool - they are not involved in the research phase. All Google has to do (theoretically) is catch people's attention in phase 1 and then give them tools for doing analysis/collaboration and documentation.
_________________________________
Google Apps is pretty nice based on my 2 hour test drive.
Similar to Microsoft Office - it integrates mail, calendar, search, chat - as well as web page, document and spreadsheet creation into one package. Documents and spreadsheets are saved on a secure online server, or may be downloaded to your computer. Documents may be saved as pdf, word, open office, rtf, or html files.
Unlike Microsoft Office, the basic Google Apps package is free - at least if you have your own domain. If you don't have one - Google will register a domain name of your choice for $10 / year, which is a good deal.
The free package comes with 2 Gigabytes for email and web pages, which allows you to create up to 100 user accounts. There's also a premier edition aimed at schools and businesses, that want to integrate Google Apps into their existing infrastructure. It provides 10 Gigabytes of email space and phone support. The premier edition is 50 dollars a year per user account.
The Google Apps word processor and spreadsheet are capable of doing most anything I usual do with those applications. One of the nice features of the word processor is the ability to save files in the pdf format.
It looks like it would be easy to collaborate on documents or spreadsheets, and the shared email features might come in handy (you can decide as the admin who will have access to the group inbox) as a discussion group. You can invite people to collaborate or view a document. You can also retrieve earlier versions of a document and see who changed what and when.
The interface for creating web pages is simple and intuitive. You can create a Personalized Start Page for your co-collaborators with a shared calendar, inbox, and your docs and spreadsheets.
Over all - pretty cool. I don't think "power users" are going to be jumping on the Google App bandwagon real soon. It has some potential for a relatively small (100 or less) group of people who want to do certain types of collaborative work. Depending on their needs, it could be a real money-saver for a small business in lieu of an expensive I.T. group/person, or be a nice tool for a group of students, or anyone else, working on a project.
It's missing the infamous Powerpoint and Access database...at least for now. I expect it will be changing to adapt to the market quite quickly.
_________________________________
